ABSTRACT
We humans have a great variety of conscious experiences: seeing the colors of the sunset, hearing thunder, feeling pain, tasting vegemite, hallucinating a dagger, or being in altered states of consciousness that are far from routine. It’s hard to doubt, moreover, that many non-human animals have a variety of conscious experiences—some familiar, and some (e.g. the perceptual experiences of bats and octopuses) radically unlike any of our own. Nevertheless, there is a common feature, shared by all these states, that is essential to their being conscious experiences: they have a certain feel, or qualitative character; there is something that it’s like to have them. Moreover, the distinctive what it’s like to be in pain or hallucinate a dagger seems essential to their being conscious experiences of that type: one cannot be in pain, or hallucinate a dagger, unless one has an experience with a particular type of qualitative character, or feel.
